The manufacturing of composite parts in a production program may involve laying up composite plies on a layup surface of a layup mandrel. Each time a composite part is laid up, the layup surface must first be cleaned to remove contaminants such as baked-on resin, adhesive, sealing chemicals, and/or other consumables that may be present from previous uses of the layup mandrel. Cleaning of the layup surface may be manually performed by a technician using a handheld orbital sander. However, for large layup mandrels, manual cleaning is a time-consuming process.
Automated approaches have been developed to reduce the amount of time required for layup mandrel cleaning. One approach requires the construction of a mandrel cleaning room that is built and commissioned to the size of the largest layup mandrel to be cleaned. Unfortunately, the construction of a dedicated mandrel cleaning room represents a significant non-recurring cost to a production program. Some cleaning techniques avoid the need for a dedicated mandrel cleaning room by installing a mandrel cleaning station on the shop floor of a production facility. However, for large layup mandrels, the infrastructure requirements are still significant and may include the need to install a foundation or track system for transporting and supporting such large layup mandrels. In addition, the floor space occupied by a mandrel cleaning station detracts from the amount of floor space available for existing manufacturing systems of the production facility.
Other automated approaches are limited in their ability to clean layup mandrels of more than one size or configuration. In addition, some approaches require the permanent installation of a cleaning cell including an overhead gantry and fencing to permit the cleaning of large layup mandrels. Furthermore, some automated approaches require a manually customized cleaning process for each unique mandrel configuration and which results in significant labor costs.
As can be seen, there exists a need in the art for a system and method for cleaning a layup mandrel that avoids the need for a dedicated cleaning room and/or associated infrastructure, and which is reconfigurable or scalable for different layup mandrel sizes and configurations and which does not require a manually customized cleaning process for each unique mandrel configuration. In addition to cleaning layup mandrels, the system and method is preferably capable of performing a variety of different types of operations on a variety of different types of workpieces.